Christophe Colinet, Smart City Project Planner of Bordeaux, shares his expectations for the future of Bordeaux in our interview at this year’s Connected Smart Cities Conference (CSCC). Hoping to “close the loop” between the technological innovation and the city’s needs, the city anticipates positive results from theSynchroniCity project. To strengthen cooperation between Bordeaux and cities worldwide, Bordeaux has recently joinedthe OASC network as a member.

Colinet says that CSCC, the annual conference organised by Open & Agile Smart Cities, is the perfect event to meet city colleagues from all over Europe and the world to discuss data-driven solutions and share experience and knowledge. Every year in January, CSCC brings together cities, researchers, the industry and innovation community as well as policy-makers from the European Commission and Parliament and national member states.

“We have a unique opportunity to find all those people at the same time, at the same place and that’s really relevant for us.”CHRISTOPHE COLINET

Bordeaux focuses on building up a smart city framework and digital infrastructure. However, transforming the mindset of public administrators is a challenging task. According to Colinet, the most difficult part to enable a smart city is to encourage colleagues from different city departments to adapt to more effective and share-friendly processes. This change can begin by talking to colleagues from other cities in order to exchange valuable experience, approaches, and know-how.

“Most of the time I spend explaining, convincing… I try to be an evangelist of the smart city inside my own city.”

Bordeaux is part of one of 16 pilots selected through the SynchroniCity open call. The pilots have started in February. With the experience from SynchroniCity, the city expects to complete the cycle on a technical level between the sensors connected to the urban data platform and the applications, which provide citizens with better digital services. Check out our other interview series below: